I am new to Captivate. I have a client that loved a short
demo i did for them on their employee website. It was about 5
minutes and it was flawless. Now, when i had the vice-pres of Human
Resources do the full presentation, Captivate missed an enormous
amount of activity on the screen. He was not blazing around, just
mousing and clicking, and entering text in a normal fashion. Entire
chuncks, i.e. logging in, were missing. I went with "custom size"
recording, sized IE to their web pages and enabled "auto"
recording, etc. etc. Am i missing something here? I cannot ask my
client to sit down and do it again hoping that after the hour it's
there!

"... after the hour?" Are you saying that the time required
for recording was 60 minutes? If so, try to put together what you
know:

A 5 minute movie was flawless.
A 60 minute movie is full of holes.

-peter, those numbers are saying something to me. Is it just
me?

In any case, try again, this time using the method the pros
use ... 1) manually recording (move mouse, then press PrtScr to
capture ... press PrtScr to capture change in background, then move
mouse, then press PrtScr to capture again - and so on) or 2)
auto-recording
supplemented by manual capture. That should help some ...
let us know.

I'm a bit confused, just exactly what are those numbers
saying to you? Should the first five minutes of a sixty-minute
program be fine, (which it wasn't, Captivate dropped the ball early
on) then go funky because of the size of the file? How did
Captivate know that i was going on for an hour? If it didn't
capture the first five minutes as far as updated screen shots,
would it have failed the test if i went to six minutes?

With all due respect, I will try the "print screen" method
which to me is a workaround and not necessarily a "pro"
methodology. I am capturing narration so fumbling around on the
keyboard will require editing. Isn't it a bit cumbersom having two
people operate the keyboard at once?

Paying $600 for a program that needs "workarounds" seems to
me the development team for Captivate needs to "fix" this so it
acts the way it is advertised.
-peter

Hopefully Hal won't mind my offering up some clarification.
From what I'm seeing, it would appear that you have a fundamental
misunderstanding of the manner in which Captivate works. It's also
possible that you have tried Captivate's loose competitor, Camtasia
Studio. If so, you may believe Captivate works in a similar
fashion.

Captivate does not capture in full motion mode. From what
I've seen of your descriptions, it seems to me that this is how you
are expecting it to behave. Just turn it on, let it record the
action, then turn it off. This is exactly how Camtasia works. But
Captivate is a bit different. What it does is to grab a screen
capture when it senses a mouse click or other action that triggers
it. This is why Hal suggested supplementing the capture process
with manually added print screen actions.

Captivate does "do" full-motion capture, but by and large it
is intended for small things such as dragging a window from one
place to another or dragging the thumb of a scroll bar or even
dragging across a line of text to select it. But it was never
intended to just turn it on and record something in full motion
mode until you stop. You can certainly try forcing it that way. To
do this, press the F9 key to begin and F10 when you are finished.
(Unless, of course, you have deviated from the defaults) Oddly
enough, I believe the same keystrokes are used in Camtasia to begin
and end recording. I do understand version 2 does a much better job
of handling full motion video, but I'd be surprised to hear it
worked fine to record an hour's worth.

I guess i do have a misunderstanding of Captivate. When I did
a 5 minute demo of a employee/management website which consisted of
logging in to the website, entering passwords, creating goals,
self-evaluations, etc. Captivate did in fact capture all the action
on the screen. However, when i tried to do the entire demo which
was just short of an hour, it failed to capture the same screens it
captured during the five-minute version. My question is, why did it
fail to repeat the first five minutes when doing the hour version?

And yes, i have purchased camtasia, but it seems the files
are much larger, and the predictive arrows and boxes around the
"going to" link are not there.

I probably should have researched this more fully before
commiting to a real project, but there you go.

Just from the outside looking in, here's my take on it. You
said "when
you did a 5 minute demo of logging into a site..." that
Captivate recorded everything. But in your initial post, you said
something about having the
vice-pres do the full presentation. When I see this, I
interpret that you performed a few steps that Captivate recorded.
But you later tried recording something you were simply watching
the vice-pres do. And therein lies a world of difference.

If you are performing the steps, Captivate is sensing when
you click the mouse, where you move it and things like that. But if
you just use it to watch someone else perform the steps (I'm
assuming that it's perhaps via some remote desktop or desktop
sharing software) there is nothing happening on your PC to trigger
the same captures.

Just from a personal standpoint, I find both Captivate AND
Camtasia have places in my toolbox. As much as I love Captivate, if
I'm correct in what I've interpreted you are doing, it would sound
to me that Camtasia is the better tool for recording the process
you are trying to record. For the simple reason of the manner in
which it records.

Yes, what i did was to download the demo of Captivate. I got
a guest logon to their employee website. I tried it for about 5
minutes, clicking around and filling in boxes. For five minutes it
worked perfectly. I bought the program and took it to the clients
site, installed it on their computer and there is where i learned
about the uphill battle i had on my hands. Right now, i am trying
to recreate his movements around the website, using his narration
as a guide. I just don't understand why it worked for me using the
demo and then the first slide recorded when the money was on the
line was recorded at 51 seconds instead of the 3 seconds that was
set in the preferences???

I do have Camtasia and if i have to will redo this thing
again. But my very unanswered question is why did it work for me (
i was quite vigorous moving around the screen) and not the next
time we did almost the same thing except for the length? If the
prefs are set for 3 seconds per slide, and it does not do that,
isn't that a bug?

I can imagine the frustration. I think once you fully
understand and come to terms with Captivate and its recording ways,
it will hopefully make more sense to you.

You said:
Yes, what i did was to download the demo of Captivate. I got a
guest logon to their employee website. I tried it for about 5
minutes, clicking around and filling in boxes. For five minutes it
worked perfectly.

By "worked perfectly", are you saying it seemed to be
recording? Or are you instead saying you recorded five minutes
worth of action, played it back and it seemed to do fine? Assuming
it's the latter, I'm simply guessing here that what you watched in
playback mode seemed acceptable and you had no actual understanding
of the source at that point? What I mean by that is that you hadn't
quite grasped the whole individual screen shot thing and what you
observed led you to conclude it was all full motion.

You then said:
I bought the program and took it to the clients site, installed
it on their computer and there is where i learned about the uphill
battle i had on my hands. Right now, i am trying to recreate his
movements around the website, using his narration as a guide. I
just don't understand why it worked for me using the demo and then
the first slide recorded when the money was on the line was
recorded at 51 seconds instead of the 3 seconds that was set in the
preferences???

Unfortunately, without actually seeing what you were doing it
is rather difficult to ascertain what may be happening. I suppose
it's entirely possible that you managed to start recording in Full
Motion mode with Captivate. Hmmm, as you say you have Camtasia,
this actually makes some sense. When you began recording, did you
press F9? And F10 to stop? If so, those are typically the
keystrokes that force Captivate to begin recording full motion
clips.

When you click Options > Recording Options... what do you
see at the bottom of the Recording Options tab? Is there a check
mark inside the check box labeled: Record actions in real time? If
so, this might explain why a single slide might be timed
substantially longer than others. And as for that "default' slide
time, I believe that only applies to slides you manually create.
For example, by clicking Insert > Blank slide...

Sorry. Sometimes it seems I end up causing more questions to
be raised than actually answering the questions that were posed.
But with a little patience and perseverance, I think we'll get
through it.

Rick, Thanks much for the prompt reply. Let me preface this
with saying that i am primarily a video guy and maybe i have stuck
my neck out too far in this world, becuase it doesn't seem to make
too much sense to me...
--

Rick:
Assuming it's the latter, I'm simply guessing here that what
you watched in playback mode seemed acceptable and you had no
actual understanding of the source at that point? What I mean by
that is that you hadn't quite grasped the whole individual screen
shot thing and what you observed led you to conclude it was all
full motion.

Peter:
That's correct. I logged on to the site, moused around,
filled in text boxes and when i published it, viola`, everything i
had done on the website was being played back to me as a swf file.
I did understand that Captivate was using some sort of predictive
action when it was compiling so it could put the arrows and the
highlighted text around where i was headed to with my mouse.

Rick:
When you began recording, did you press F9? And F10 to stop?
If so, those are typically the keystrokes that force Captivate to
begin recording full motion clips.
(continued)
When you click Options > Recording Options... what do you
see at the bottom of the Recording Options tab? Is there a check
mark inside the check box labeled: Record actions in real time? If
so, this might explain why a single slide might be timed
substantially longer than others. And as for that "default' slide
time, I believe that only applies to slides you manually create.
For example, by clicking Insert > Blank slide...

Peter
I got into the real-time mode by clicking on the "options"
tab in the record window. First it asked me to check the audio
levels on the mic, then i clicked on options, and a tab for "full
motion recording" was the middle one. Everything was checked but
"disable hardware accel." I assumed that got me in full motion
recording autimatically. Guess i was wrong. I thought i had
duplicated my setup from my short demo, but i guess not. Perhaps, i
just got real "lucky?" with my initial setup?

How about this, do you think i am spitting in the wind with
Captivate by trying to recreate slides and insert them in the
correct spots using the narration, or should i scrap this and
either start with Captivate again, or try Camtasia? I know it's a
non-objective question, but i would appreciate your take on my
delima.

First, you need to determine the audio used for the
narration. So click the slide containing the existing audio and
examine the Slide Properties. After you do that, click the Audio
tab. Note the name used. Dismiss the properties.

Now click the slide where you want to actually use the audio.
Examine the properties for that slide. Then click the Audio tab and
click the "Select audio from library" button. After that, choose
the file you noted earlier.

Thank you for your patience with my newbie questions, and
impetiousness. I do have a much better handle on how Captivate
"thinks" thanks to you. What i see as the main difference, for me,
between Captivate and Camtasia is I don't get the fancy, predictive
"now click on XYZ link" stuff with Camtasia and I do with
Captivate. From a video editor's POV, Camtasia operates more in the
way i think. That said, I have chosen to redo the project in
Captivate, if, i can have control over the computer that the
director is doing the presentation, so i can update the screen
captures when needed. We tried this once and when multi/user
control was enabled over their network, the mose pointer began to
flicker and it was a nusance. One more question if you have it in
you, "when i import an audio file and say "spread it over several
slides," it seems i have to get it right the first time. I have not
found a way to get back into that "edit" mode where "start the next
slide" is a choice. Any thoughts?

From what you are describing, you simply need to adjust audio
timing. Assuming I'm correctly understanding you, try clicking
Audio > Edit Timing... and see if that doesn't display the
dialog you are looking for.

Rick, thank you so much for all your help! A couple of things
from the video editing world that might help here: Being able to
see the slides while the "edit audio timing" box is open. An
overall view of where the "start next slide" markers are in the
audio timeline. Pherhaps there is another way of keeping an eye on
the overall picture i'm just not aware of right now. All-in-all, i
think Captivate is a good solution for training types of
applications.

My habits from the RoboDemo days... I record all of my
Captivate movies using only the manual recording method (pressing a
hotkey after every screen action I perform). It really doesn't slow
me down as I record, and I'm guaranteed that everything will be
recorded. In addition, the cursor movements, screen capture, and
interactions for each action are all on ONE slide. Doing automatic
captures gets things out of synch across several slides, making
edits very difficult.